Francis Thompson

Go, songs, for ended is our brief, sweet play

Go, songs, for ended is our brief, sweet play; Go, children of swift joy and tardy sorrow: And some are sung, and that was yesterday, And some are unsung, and that may be tomorrow.

Dream tryst

The breaths of kissing night and day Were mingled in the eastern Heaven, Throbbing with unheard melody, Shook Lyra all its star-cloud seven. When dusk shrank cold, and light trod shy, And dawn’s grey

New Year's Chimes

What is the song the stars sing? (And a million songs are as song of one) This is the song the stars sing: (Sweeter song’s none) One to set, and many to sing, (And

Gilded Gold

Thou dost to rich attire a grace, To let it deck itself with thee, And teachest pomp strange cunning ways To be thought simplicity. But lilies, stolen from grassy mold, No more curled state

What shall I your true love tell?

What shall I your true love tell, Earth forsaking maid? What shall I your true love tell When life’s spectre’s laid? “Tell him that, our side the grave, Maid may not believe Life should

To Olivia

I fear to love thee, Sweet, because Love’s the ambassador of loss; White flake of childhood, clinging so To my soiled raiment, thy shy snow At tenderest touch will shrink and go. Love me

The Poppy

To Monica Summer set lip to earth’s bosom bare, And left the flushed print in a poppy there: Like a yawn of fire from the grass it came, And the fanning wind puffed it

Before Her Portrait In Youth

As lovers, banished from their lady’s face And hopeless of her grace, Fashion a ghostly sweetness in its place, Fondly adore Some stealth-won cast attire she wore, A kerchief or a glove: And at

An Arab Love-Song

The hunchèd camels of the night Trouble the bright And silver waters of the moon. The Maiden of the Morn will soon Through Heaven stray and sing, Star gathering. Now while the dark about

To A Poet Breaking Silence

Too wearily had we and song Been left to look and left to long, Yea, song and we to long and look, Since thine acquainted feet forsook The mountain where the Muses hymn For

To A Snowflake

What heart could have thought you? Past our devisal (O filigree petal!) Fashioned so purely, Fragilely, surely, From what Paradisal Imagineless metal, Too costly for cost? Who hammered you, wrought you, From argentine vapor?

The Hound of Heaven

I fled Him down the nights and down the days I fled Him down the arches of the years I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind, and in the midst

In No Strange Land

The kingdom of God is within you O world invisible, we view thee, O world intangible, we touch thee, O world unknowable, we know thee, Inapprehensible, we clutch thee! Does the fish soar to

Daisy

Where the thistle lifts a purple crown Six foot out of the turf, And the harebell shakes on the windy hill O breath of the distant surf! The hills look over on the South,

At Lord's

It is little I repair to the matches of the Southron folk, Though my own red roses there may blow; It is little I repair to the matches of the Southron folk, Though the